I like the intention of the second one but it felt too prescriptive for my purposes. I've had decent success trying to learn to better empathize genuinely.

Practice with public speaking and corporate politics and influencing are doing a lot to help me better understand how to befriend and relate to people that don't share my interests. It was initially surprising for me to be one of the geekier people in a building that is ostensibly full of IT workers.

Things that work for me: Toastmasters, Dale Carnegie books, Rands in Repose (blog and/or books), regional sports blogs.